


Classic Water

by electricchicken



Category: California Diaries - Martin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:18:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electricchicken/pseuds/electricchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ducky works, writes, freaks out, reads some poetry and comes dangerously close to having an epiphany.  Alex supervises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Classic Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mizzmarvel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizzmarvel/gifts).



_"You smile at the customer who looks like a walking sports-logo billboard... and try to be glad that he is at least talking to you like a human being and not like a robot only here to serve him._

You steer him to the...  
Poetry section?

Poetry?   
Him? It's what he asked for.  
Gotta shelve books."

—Ducky's Diary Three

** December 12 – In Which Our Hero Asks, why aren't all horror movies about holiday shopping?**

It is madness out there. Complete madness. You have shelved more books about reindeer and elves than you knew existed—or wanted to know about. There are at least three more crates in the back, and you're starting to remember why the Grinch from that Dr. Seuss story always scared you as a child.

Your break ends in about 2.6 seconds, and you haven't even started eating your lunch yet. There's some sort of pre-Christmas post-Thanksgiving blowout sale happening at this women's clothing store down the street and the café next to Winslow Books is picking up all their business.

Ducky McCrae! Dodging middle aged women with shopping bags as he pursues his goal of... lunch.

Okay, not your finest action hero moment. But only because you can't translate the look that one woman gave you when you tried to grab the last blueberry scone into words.

BUT ANYWAY.

You have news. And the ability to eat a sandwich without using your hands, apparently.

Alex. Is. Coming. Back.

To visit, you mean. You would have gotten this down sooner, but he called you when you were on your way out this morning, trying to put on your coat and eat something for breakfast at the same time (this no-handed food thing is a disturbing trend, Ducky).

You wouldn't even answer, except the call display says CHICAGO, so you scoop up the phone along with your keys and one of your shoes.

D [muffled by toast]: "Sup?"

Alex: "Hey, Ducky? Bad time?"

D [heroic swallow, pulling one shoe on]: "No, it's cool. Can't talk long, though. What's up?"

A: "You want to hang out Friday night?"

At which point you lose it and go over in a heap. John Wayne weeps, Ducky.

D: "What? How?"

A: "Apparently they open the nuthouse doors for the holiday season." Pause, awkward laugh you don't join in on. "I get two weeks back home, with appropriate support and supervision. I get in Thursday."

You make appropriate noises of excitement, and try to figure out where your other shoe's gone in the collapse. You still have no idea how you made it to the bookstore on time.

Which is not the point. The point is, you get to see your best friend for the first time in almost a year. You are excited, ecstatic.

And completely terrified.

2.1 seconds of break left. Going to try this eating with hands thing.

 

** With .5 Remaining Seconds of Break **

What is "appropriate support and supervision?"

You keep picturing it as being like house arrest, which is stupid. For one thing, there's no way an ankle monitor would keep someone from being depressed.

 

** December 15 – At Work, After School **

Poetry Guy's in again. Still wearing more sports logos than you even recognise. One of these days you're going to have to ask him what people actually do at the eXtreme Games.

He's getting to be kind of a regular. You see him nearly every week, at this point. You tried cataloguing his purchases for a while, in case you wanted to check them out, until you realised that was sort of creepy and stalkerish.

Anyway, Poetry Guy pokes around in the section for a while, and you pull your copy of Baudelaire's _Fleurs du Mal_ out from under the counter and try to flip through it in a way that's both subtle, and allows him to see the cover.

You haven't really decided if you like the poems yet. Honestly, it's kind of weird stuff. You're reading something that you think might be about vampires, when someone clears their throat next to your ear.

Ducky [not particularly manly squeak]: "Sorry!"

Poetry Guy [nodding to your book]: "What do you think?"

You sputter out something and try to set the book down without dropping it. Poetry Guy watches you with this weird little smile, like your complete lack of social graces amuses him.

D [trying for cool]: "It's... interesting."

PG: "Not your thing?"

D: "Probably not my thing."

He slides something across the counter. A book—obviously, Ducky, it's not like you work in a BOOKstore or anything.

PG: "You should try reading Berman instead. He's a little less..."

D: "Creepy?"

He blinks at you for a second, and you are sure you've just put in your foot in your mouth and probably cost the store a customer too, when he breaks into a grin and starts laughing.

You never noticed before, but Poetry Guy has dimples.

 

**December 17**

Alex gets in tonight. Mrs. Snyder called you to ask if you wanted to come to the airport, but Mr. Winslow's got you working again this afternoon and your math teacher's planning a quiz in honour of the last day of school before vacation. Some people don't get holiday cheer.

Sunny's restocking the window display behind you. She and her dad brought in this hideous fake tree—one of those white and silver ones you've never seen outside of television specials—and they've been decorating it with those miniature impulse-buy books. Better there than near you, in your opinion.

You wonder if Alex is packing yet. He's always been really bad at packing.

It's slower during the week, so you stage a dramatic reading of that book Poetry Guy recommended to you for Sunny's listening pleasure. There's a poem in it that reminds you of the two of you. _Classic Water_, it's called.

"I remember Kitty saying we shared a deep longing for   
the consolation prize, laughing as we rinsed the stage coach."

You don't really get it, you don't think. But you like it.

You'll have to let him know, the next time he comes in.

You wonder if Alex will still have the same haircut when you see him. That's got to be the stupidest thing you've ever thought, isn't it?

 

**ALEX DAY—Ten Minute Warning**

Your palms are sweating.

This is ridiculous, McCrae. You're not supposed to get this worked up about this. It's not like you're going on a date. It's not even like you're going to school.

This is your best friend.

Your best. Friend.

Worst case scenario, he'll be back in Chicago by January, anyway.

 

**Nine Minutes to Go**

You wish you hadn't written that.

It's not that you aren't excited to see him. That you don't WANT him here. You do. It's just...

You still talk to him on the phone, and you e-mail, and he sent you a post card once. It's not like you aren't still friends. And he's getting better, you know it. It's in the way you can hear emotions in his voice again—the way he's started telling jokes. Not good jokes, usually, but that's nothing new.

It's just

He's not the Alex you sent to Chicago. Thank God. But he's not The Old Alex, either. The Alex who knew what you were thinking, who you could talk to for hours about nothing instead of therapy and treatments and hospitals.

That Alex isn't coming back. You're not sure what you're getting instead.

And you know, you know, that it's horrible and selfish of you to even be thinking this way when he's trying to get better, trying to stay your friend. But you can't keep yourself from wishing it was your old best friend coming over to hang out, instead of some stranger you haven't seen since before your seventeenth birthday.

God, you are the worst friend—

Doorbell.

Pull it together.

I can do this.

 

**Three Hours Later**

Just dropping in to say you are, as usual, an idiot.

Alex is...

Yelling at you from downstairs. Something about bad Christmas tv specials. He's been trying to convince you to give _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ another shot. You remain unconvinced.

Wow, you can't believe how much you've missed this.

 

**Technically December 19 – In Which not a Creature is Stirring, Not Even a Duck**

Okay, so you're stirring. Writing.

Whatever.

You let Alex convince you to watch the tv special. It's not as bad as you remember. And the song's kind of catchy. You feel appropriately filled with holiday cheer, despite the fact that neither you or Ted have bothered to put up a tree and your parents' Christmas card has yet to arrive from Greece.

You order pizza and take it up to your room, to keep Ted from stealing half of it. Sit on your bed, and everything's so familiar you could choke on it.

But you don't, because Alex is telling you some story about his uncle in Chicago and how he took him to Wrigley Field even though he doesn't like baseball, and how it's apparently a sin up there to put ketchup on hot dogs.

D: "So, is it weird being back?"

A [shifts, shrugs, takes a bite of pizza]: "Honestly? Yeah."

He tells you he didn't really sleep last night, because being back in his old room was so strange. How it was so good to see his mom and sister again, but he can't stop worrying that just being here is going to undo everything he's been working on.

You don't know what to say for that, and settle for making sympathetic noises around your own mouthful of double cheese and sausage.

A [looking away]: "I'm really glad you're around, Ducky. You kind of keep me sane."

And you really don't know what to say to that, because there's a lump in your throat and your eyes feel hot, and how could you ever have thought you wouldn't want him here?

D [awkward]: "Thanks. Really. It's good to have your back."

A [still not looking at you, but staring at your bedside table]: "Hey, what are you reading?"

It's the worst subject change ever, but you'd rather your first night with Alex didn't end in you crying like a sap, so you go with it and tell him about Poetry Guy and your newfound obsession with David Berman. You even make him read some of _Classic Water_, even though Alex is probably the least likely poetry buff in the universe. You're not sure you've seen him read anything for fun since you stopped collecting Marvel comics.

A: "This guy sounds cool."

D: "Yeah, actually. He's got, like, this terrible obsession with sports gear, though. I thought guys like that all wore black turtlenecks and berets."

A [rolling his eyes]: "You are such a cliche nut. Start watching movies made after 1987."

D [mock offended]: "John Hughes is my God."

Alex rolls his eyes again, then hesitates for a second.

A: "So, do you like this guy?"

D: "I guess. We haven't talked much. He seems cool, though."

A: "You should ask him for coffee or something."

Which is the most random suggestion you've heard since Sunny tried to convince you to start wearing pegged jeans last week when you were at the mall. (You do not have the legs.)

D [puzzled]: "Yeah, that wouldn't be creepy. What would we talk about?"

A [gesturing to the book with a 'duh, idiot' look]: "Uh... poetry? If he's coming in to talk to you that often, it's a pretty good sign he's interested in spending more time with you."

And that's when you realise what kind of conversation you're having.

D [holding up both hands, frantic]: "Woah, woah. Alex..."

A: "It's okay, Ducky. It's not like I don't know."

_But I don't know!_ you want to yell at him. Because—okay, in all honesty, dear old, trusty old journal? It's not like you haven't thought

I mean, I've wondered. But I haven't—you've never. Never gone further than that. Never even written the words down. Never gone further than reminding yourself that you're TOTALLY WEIRD about girls, about everything. Unless...

You're not stupid. You've watched enough tv, done enough Google searches, listened to the Cro Mags call you names often enough. But the words scare you.

Word, you guess. Singular. One. Three letters, too terrifying for you to even let yourself think too often, never mind write down or do anything with.

On the other side of the bed, Alex is wide eyed and going pale.

"Sorry, sorry," he's babbling. "I—oh my god, I always just thought. I mean, since we were kids. I thought it was just one of those reading your mind things." He lets out this little, nervous laugh and rakes a hand through his hair. "I didn't mean to," he starts, then trails off and just stares.

And all you can think is, _that long_?

This big scary—utterly terrifying—thing you've been trying to avoid for years, and he knew?

D: "You never said anything."

A [looking a little less panicked]: "It wasn't important."

He's telling the truth, you realise. And it's not like him not telling you about seeing a therapist, either. That was—that still stings, actually. This. This really just was a nonissue, wasn't it? For him.

And for the second time in your conversation, you kind of want to cry, because even though you can't quite bring yourself to say the word it's such a RELIEF to know it's out there. (Pun intended?)

D [trying that staring at the bed thing, now]: "I've never... I don't know what to do about it. Any of it. I wouldn't know where to start with being like that."

There's this long pause, and for a moment you think you've miscalculated, and Alex was actually talking about how he'd always known you were a secret poetry fan, or that he's changed his mind and cares, a lot, that you're probably—that you're different.

Then he taps you on the shoulder, and when you look up he's giving you this soft, slightly exasperated smile.

"Well, like I said, you could try asking him for coffee," he says.

You're not sure, but you think this might be what Dr. Seuss was talking about with that whole feeling your heart grow ten sizes bigger thing.

**Author's Note:**

> David Berman's "Classic Water" can be found [here](http://mareeblogblogblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/classic-water-david-berman.html).
> 
> Thanks to the ever-understanding KChan for the speedy beta.


End file.
